Before and After and Always
by jillyfae
Summary: How they got there and where they're going ... a short fiction collection regarding an eventual threesome of Sebastian Vael, Fenris, and Marian Hawke.
1. Heat

_Over on AO3, I have a post-game fic involving a threesome between Fenris/Marian Hawke/Sebastian, as they settle into their new roles in Starkhaven. (Being exceedingly explicit, I don't have it cross-posted here. You'll have to go there to take a look.) That said, this short ficlet involves the same characters, back in Act III, before Fenris and Marian reconciled, and well before they figured out that there might be something they could manage with Sebastian as well. _

_(As always, this is BioWare's playground, thanks for letting us play in it. ^_^)_

* * *

It was hot.

Even Fenris found it uncomfortable, and he'd thought himself accustomed to rain forests.

The air felt like water, hard to breathe, hard to see through, thick and wavery above the flagstones, sunlight reflecting off walls and rooftops, painfully bright and yet oddly murky at the same time.

The whole city also stank, of sewers and dead fish and dirty water. Everyone was trying to get flowers in from the country, incense from the Antivans, anything and everything to cover the smell.

Sebastian had even mentioned increased parishioners at the Chantry, lounging beneath thick stone walls during the heat of the day; stealing incense on their way out again in the evening, to cut the thick air in Lowtown.

Hawke had dragged her mabari up on the roof of the estate, where there was occasionally the slightest shift in air from the sea, and set up an awning and a giant bowl of water, trying to comfort the poor panting hound.

Everyone else had joined her, because, what else was there to do?

"It's even too hot to play cards," Isabela sighed, sprawled apparently bonelessly across one of the mats Bodahn had found in the cellar, and kindly strewn across the rooftop so they had a place to rest. "What I wouldn't give to be on deck, far enough out from the docks to just bask in some proper sea air."

"You've already given everything you've got, to anyone who'd ask, several times over," Aveline snorted. "Everything other people have too, I'm rather sure."

It was too hot to argue. Isabela simply lifted one hand to wave a rude gesture lazily in Aveline's general direction.

Fenris ignored the occasional grumbling, sitting against one of the poles set up to brace the awning, watching the dog.

How much worse must the heat be, for a creature so thick and solid, so heavy with muscle and hair, born and bred down south in the cold of Ferelden?

It was easy to admire the mabari, such a strong, forthright beast. Much easier that, then to _not _notice Marian or Sebastian, stripped out of their customary armours, miserable and hot even in simple breeches and thin blouses.

Fenris had ruined whatever it was he and Marian could almost have had, running away, but he didn't know how to turn around. He was quite sure he still loved her, but that wasn't enough, was it? He had to be able to face her, to face himself, to stop the grind of his teeth, the sear of his anger behind every thought and word and deed.

Not that there was any reason to suppose she'd welcome him back, even if he figured it out. She should be with someone who could be there for her; he could only hope she realized it as well. Maybe then she could find some happiness, something to counteract all the loss she'd suffered. It would be worth anything, if she was happy.

Sebastian chuckled softly at something she said in the background, and Fenris was suddenly grateful for how well he'd trained his face, those years before Kirkwall. The heat might make them lazy, but none of them were _blind_. Isabela or Varric, especially, would make note if his nostrils started flaring every time the Brother caught his attention.

He had no idea what had happened to his friendship with Sebastian, but somehow he kept noticing things when they were together. The shape of his collarbone when he took off his breastplate. The way his voice purred when he was amused, but his eyes stayed clear and kind.

"Copper for your thoughts?"

Fenris shifted his head to eye the object of those thoughts, as Sebastian settled to a seat of his own against the next pole over. "Not particularly in need of a copper."

Sebastian smiled briefly, a smooth twist of his lips. "Just as well, as I don't actually have one on me."

"Shouldn't promise something you can't deliver." Fenris stopped, jaw tight, surprised to have heard a hint of heat in his voice.

Sebastian's eyebrows lifted slightly, making his eyes appear large and even more blue than usual. _Hadn't known that was possible._ "My apologies, then. I won't disturb you further."

His eyelids closed, his head leaning back against the smooth surface of the wooden support. Fenris swallowed, unable to look away from the line of the other man's throat, the flash of heat in his chest impossible to deny.

Fenris loved Marian. He knew that. He hoped she knew that.

But he'd let her go, let her be free. He'd made no promises of faithfulness. _And even if I had, I haven't_ done _anything_. Repeated application of logic was unable to ease the odd tangle of guilt he felt in his stomach. He wasn't sure if anything ever would.

Not blaming Sebastian for his own failings might be a start, however. "No," he shook his head slightly. "I'm so-"

"No need, Fenris," Sebastian's eyes opened part-way, just a hint of white and blue visible between his lashes. "I was a bit presumptuous. And this blasted heat..." He shrugged slightly, the muscles in his shoulders almost visible as they shifted beneath his pale muslin shirt.

"It is not the heat." Fenris refused to accept an easy excuse, or Sebastian's forgiving manners. "I simply... want something I cannot have." _Two someone's, apparently. I am nothing if not ridiculous in my desires._ "I apologize for taking it out on you."

"You know I will always listen." His eyes had opened completely now, his body leaning slightly forward. "If it would help."

"Not in this case." Fenris' eyes flashed to the side. _Not when you're the one..._

"Ahh," Sebastian sighed softly, his own gaze flickering briefly. "Of course." There was an instant's awkward silence, tension in his arms that Fenris couldn't interpret, his head tilted slightly as he stared off to the side. "She does still care for you, I believe. I would not call things hopeless."

Fenris snorted. Of course they were hopeless. He was hopeless, and even if she did still care for some inexplicable reason, could forgive, could understand something that he himself did not... that was only part of his problem.

"But, I did not mean to pry." Sebastian moved one leg, a smooth shift of weight as he lifted himself to his feet. "I shall see if Serah Orana has managed to discover any more fruit for juice. Or finished cooling another batch of boiled water, for the hound."

Fenris could not resist watching him leave, eyes blinking slowly closed only when the door to the Estate swung closed, silencing the steady beat of Sebastian's firm stride.

He shifted his back against the pole, only to be distracted by Hawke's face. She'd apparently been watching Sebastian leave as well, and now her clear brown eyes caught him, her expression soft but completely unreadable.

_I am sorry, Marian, you deserve better than you have gotten in this life._

_As do we all, I suppose._


	2. Unexpected

_Over on AO3, I have a post-game fic involving a threesome between Fenris/Marian Hawke/Sebastian, as they settle into their new roles in Starkhaven. (Being exceedingly explicit, I don't have it cross-posted here. You'll have to go there to take a look.) That said, this short scene takes place at about the same time, a moment of quiet reflection for Fenris._

_(As always, this is BioWare's playground, thanks for letting us play in it. ^_^)_

* * *

Fenris sighed, softly, and leaned back in his chair, trying to stretch the knot low in his back. Trying not to think about how much better Marian's fingers would feel, pushing against his skin to ease the muscles beneath.

_Work to do, first. In my chair. In my office._

He semi-regularly decided they must have lost one of their fights against a desire demon of some sort back in Kirkwall, and this was all an imaginary realm in the Fade. That theory made more sense than reality.

Reality should not include him being a person of influence. Free. Respected._ Loved._

Reality could not possibly include intimate knowledge of the way Sebastian's eyes glimmered in firelight, or how they darkened beneath his lashes when he was _admiring the view,_ as he liked to put it.

Marian frequently complained about those eyes, in a rough breathless voice that made it very clear how little she was actually _complaining_.

She said much the same thing about Fenris' eyes, and Fenris' voice, and the feel of his skin and the taste of his tattoos. Those were all remembered as _too good to be true, _as well.

It was a very long list, nowadays, populated mostly by Marian and Sebastian. By the warmth of their bodies, and the taste of their lips, by the feel of them around him, above him, below him, never too far away.

Even more remarkably, it included the days when no one touched him at all, when the past came back to haunt him, and they gladly sat in the _other chair,_ or asked before fingers ran softly through his hair, or carefully did nothing more than place one chaste kiss against his forehead before retreated to their own work, content simply to share the same air, the same room, the same life.

He did not know how he'd gotten so very lucky, but he was quite sure he never wished to return to any possible reality without them.


End file.
